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Celerity (VTM)
Celerity is a Discipline that grants vampires supernatural quickness and reflexes. Overview For some Cainites, the mortal world moves in slow motion. In times of stress, vampires with Celerity can move with amazing speed, becoming blurs of motion to anyone, mortal or immortal, who does not possess the Discipline. Celerity is common to the Assamite, Brujah, and Toreador clans. The Assamites utilize the Discipline to strike down their foes before they can mount a counterattack. Toreador are more likely to use the Discipline to lend supernatural grace to live performances such as a dance, but can be as terrifying as Assamites if they are angered. Normally each dot provides an additional action that can be used for movement, attacking, or other physical feats in a single round without penalties for multiple actions. This extraordinary speed violates the laws of physics in that the Cainite does not experience any change in momentum, friction, etc. A knife thrown by someone using Celerity is not any faster, and a vampire moving at incredible speeds will never catch fire no matter how fast they move. Although Celerity is a common discipline, its similarity to Temporis seems to place its origin with Clan Brujah. Any vampire who learns Temporis (and any True Brujah, who have an affiliation in the blood for it) may never learn or use Celerity.In game mechanics, this is known as the "Temporal Exclusion" rule. For more information, see the Temporis entry. As part of the Curse upon Caine, heavy reliance on Celerity can lead to impatience with the slow pace of nightly life, leaving the vampire hungry and exhausted after each use. To great accustomization to the slow world that a vampire sees when Celerity is active, can lead to disorientation when the world "speeds up" as the Discipline ends. Official Abilities There are generally no individual powers for Celerity in the tabletop version until level 6. At that point characters may choose to gain additional Celerity actions or choose a unique power. Included below are the official powers described in supplements for Vampire: The Masquerade and Dark Ages: Vampire. Sources are described below in the order they were printed. Advanced Powers * ** Flawless Parry: Make perfect defensive motions at the expense of taking no other action ** Precision: Enter a trance where you can operate with exceptionally fine manipulation ** Projectile: Throw objects with the speed of your Celerity ** Tireless Tread: Run at 50 miles per hour for at least eight hours ** Quickness: Expend a blood and gain yet another additional turn. All previous celerity levels are activated ** Momentum: Focus your Celerity into one instant, increasing your strength * ** Celerity Refinement: Choose to spend vitae for Celerity as you need them, rather than declaring them beforehand ** Flower of Death: Use your Celerity to gain bonuses to attacking ** Quickness: Expend extra blood points to gain extra actions, at the cost of an unsoakable lethal damage level per action ** Stutter-Step: Use your Celerity to gain bonuses to defense * ** Physical Defiance: Move so fast you defy gravity and kill mortals instantly as you pass through them ** The Unseen Storm: Move so fast you are truly invisible ** Time out of Time: React instantly to anything and move before anyone realizes what you have done ** Zephyr: Move so fast that you seem to defy gravity * ** Paragon of Motion: Perform most physical acts without fail ** Between the Ticks: Expend a blood and a Willpower, you gain an automatic success on all attacks delivered to an opponent with less than advanced Celerity. You have an extra action against those with advanced Celerity. All attacks delivered by those with less than advanced Celerity are considered to be automatic failures. You can declare fair escape at any time * ** Plot Device Version differences Celerity underwent several mechanical revisions between edition, making some changes in how the discipline is viewed. While all versions have Celerity give extra actions, they differ heavily in reaction time before it may be used, the amount of blood required for levels higher than one, and whenever it grants increased Dexterity or not. In Second Edition one blood point is spent to gain one extra action per dot in the discipline in the same turn. In Revised the blood point must be spent in the turn before taking the extra actions. In Vampire: the Dark Ages and Dark Ages: Vampire instead one blood point per extra action must be spent (up to the number of dots in the discipline), in the same turn. In the 20th Anniversary Edition, each dot in the discipline gives one bonus die to Dexterity, but each such bonus die may be transformed into one extra action in the turn at the cost of one blood point. In Vampire: The Dark Ages 20th Anniversary Edition, each dot of Celerity gives one bonus die to Dexterity and the character can add their Celerity rating to the number of yards/meters moved per turn. Additionally, a blood point can be spent to ignore penalties for multiple actions up to the characters Celerity rating. Lastly the character can spend a blood point to multiply her movement speed by 1 plus her Celerity rating. References ---- Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7 Level 8 Level 9 Level 10 Category:Discipline (VTM) Category:Vampire: The Masquerade glossary